THE LABOUR DEMONSTRATION

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8833, 17 July 1890, Page 3

THE LABOUR DEMONSTRATION

A TOUCHING INCIDENT. TaE Labour Demonstration in London was a gigantic affair, says a Home correspondent of a contemporary, yet so perfectly organised that a mere handful of police easily regulated the traffic. Reporters cpecially pasted at the park gates reckoned that the demonstrators (walking eight and ten abreast) numbered 130,000, and I think they must be right, as never before at similar mass meetings have I seen the great playground of the West End half so crowded. The most remarkable feature of the affair was the orderliness add good nature of everybody. As a a rule, when Demos invades Hyde Park, the smart residents of Lancaster Gate, Bayswater, and South Kensington remain judiciously at home. On this occasion, however, after viewing the processionists from its upper windows, Swelldom came to the conclusion that there was nothing to fear, and soon parties of well-dressed Bunday afternoon sightseers could be seen curiously permeating the throng. I stood near the shirtniakers' platform. The speakers were of the conventional " demonstrator" class, and appeared to me to be doing but little execution till a young working girl stepped forward. She had a Sale, plain -face and a Whitechapel accent, ed her bonnet in her hand, and faltered rather painfully to begin with. Yet in a f e # minutes this rough, uncultured creature had reduced ' the thousands ' around to strained, listening silence. In tones vibrating with intense feeling, the girl said she wished to tell us what the lives of the Bhirtmakers' apprentices were like. She had assured her fellow-workors over and over again that the people did not know how they were starved and overworked and sweat id. They would help them as they had helped the dockers if they did. The speaker then dived into detail and vividly described the shirtmakers' bare, sordid, hopeless struggle for .existence. After working us up considerably she suddenly drojped her voice and said, " Three years ago come June, a spruce bit of a chap coomes our way with book and pencil. Parlyment (says he) 'as 'card o' your grievances, and the sweating, and is goin' to mend things.' But you mußt give me f ac's (facts). Lor I I give 'ira bushels o' facts, and orf 'c goes. Thon we waits and opes a year, but' nothing 'appens. In June epruco chap coomes agin. It'i all lU right, nyi hi, thoro'i a 'missioa (cow.

mission) a enquiring like anythink. Some o' you gals must be 'xemined. Well, some of us was. Our Liza were one. She come 'ome in rare ppeerits. Parlyment, she says, is agoin to right us. We 'ad bloaters for tea that night in honour of the occasion (laughter). Then we waited and 'oped and 'oped and 'oped till we were sick. T'other day I 'sees spruce chap in Oxford-street. Collerin' of 'im, I says, " What 'as Parlymint done for us ?" " Not much, I fear," says 'c, serious like. ".'Tisa pity," I says, " as 'ow you couldn't leave us poor girls alone. 'Aven't we (with intense bitterness) enough to bear that you must come a-blatherin' about fac's and missions and j | 'xatninations, and raisin' 'opes as were never to be fulfilled." And now," cried the girl; " 'ang Parlyment, says I. I'll believe in the people, in you (excitedly) brothers and Bisters. Tell the rich folk that if they won't 'elp us a little (Gord knows we don't want much) we'll turn upon them cruel and make them suffer as they've made us suffer." I think it must have been the girl's silver voice and intense earnestness that held us all for the fifteen minutes she spoke. Many people around me were powerfully moved, and had the fair orator chosen to " send round the hat " there and then for the cause I am convinced every person within hearing would have liberally responded.